Gourmet Galley: Pork tenderloin, new potatoes make impressive entrée

This 1½-pound boneless pork tenderloin and some new potatoes made an impressive entrée for last night’s dinner.

I baked the potatoes and the meat in a rimmed baking pan with a rack on the bottom. If your oven has a broiler pan with a rack, that’s good to use.

When baking whole new potatoes, I generally remove a strip of the peeling where the indentions, or eyes, are. In this recipe the potatoes are tossed in butter or olive oil, creamy horseradish, salt and pepper. Horseradish on baked potatoes gives them a unique, sort of sweet flavor.

I patted a flavorful bread crumb, garlic and fresh basil mixture over the tenderloin. That bread mixture, moistened with olive oil, adds a nice crunch to the sliced meat after it’s cooked.

The tenderloin I used in this recipe weighed 1½ pound s, and I like that size. Sometimes you see the smaller ones that are two to a pack.

The surest way to cook either size is to use an instant-read meat thermometer.

Pork has to be cooked to an internal temperature of 145 F. The “safe cooking temp for pork” used to be 160 but it was reduced a few years back. I still like mine a bit more “done,” so I stay nearer the 160 range. That’s totally up to your taste.